


spit the blood back

by orphan_account



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Corpses, Dead People, Gen, Introspection, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 07:17:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20060137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There's a dead body in the lake."Well shit," Josh says."I mean," Tyler squints in the hard sunlight at the bloated tangle of limbs, limp like a wet rag doll. His feathery hair blows in the steady breeze and he's standing stiff in his Garfield t-shirt, hands clenched at his side. "Shit is a way to put it.""Yeah.Shit."





	spit the blood back

**Author's Note:**

> i joined this hell site around 3 years ago so i just decided to rewrite the first fic i ever published here (and deleted lol i dont know if i have any saved versions of it). but it definitely shows how my writing focus and style has shifted since i remember it wasn't descriptive of the state of being like... Dead as much as i did in the rewrite   
it kind of sucks but here it is

There's a dead body in the lake.

  
"Well shit," Josh says.

  
"I mean," Tyler squints in the hard sunlight at the bloated tangle of limbs, limp like a wet rag doll. His feathery hair blows in the steady breeze and he's standing stiff in his Garfield t-shirt, hands clenched at his side. "Shit is a way to put it."

  
"Yeah. _Shit_."

  
Tyler doesn't respond. They continue to stare at the body—he can't think of it as a person at this point, just a sack of skin and bones haphazardly tossed into the water to decompose, easily disposable like a cheap camera—and Josh doesn't know whether he should stay still like this or puke. And the more times the image of the ripped up t-shirt the body is wearing that's sticking to wrinkled, sagging flesh burns into his memory, the more he can't help thinking about how it got here or whether it has a face or a family or a house; did it get here itself? Was it murdered on the side of the middle-of-nowhere road, bloody skin ripped to pieces under a blade while a coughing car engine still runs in the thick darkness, then dragged to the lake where someone thought it wouldn't be found, left to sink to the bottom with the weight of clinging algae? Josh tightens his fists. Or the body could have jumped in the lake itself, lungs collapsing like a rotting wood house and flooding its body with lake water. Josh's head spins.

  
His brain won't stop. There's already a choking feeling in the back of his throat like someone's put their hand around his neck, squeezing so hard there are bruises and scratch marks on his skin. He turns around and coughs up watery vomit into tall, waving grass.

Josh swears that he can taste blood.

  
When he's finished, he wipes his mouth with his threadbare camo jacket and sits facing the opposite direction of the lake. A forest on this side stretches upwards and threatens to eat him whole.

  
"Are you okay, man?"

  
Tyler's still in place, gazing at the body. Sometimes Josh forgets that Tyler is dead. Technically, people like Josh's therapist gripping her thick book that lists psychological diseases to ever exist in her veiny, living hands, or probably a Google search would classify Tyler as a textbook psychopath—he doesn't really have any sensitivity or feelings and unlike Josh, he can look at dead things without spilling the contents of his stomach onto the ground. Josh still isn't really sure how this thing is working in the first place; the dead guy thing. But Josh is sort of desensitized to the abnormal and when it comes to his feelings, neglect is his primary expectation. Tyler's just there. He doesn't try to psychologically manipulate Josh or anything like in the shows he's watched on TV.

  
"Yeah, yeah," Josh scratches the back of his head. His hair's faded and close to falling out from so much bleaching, straw-like between his fingers. "Just had to vomit. No big deal."

  
"Right," Tyler gives the body one last hard look and glances at Josh. "I don't know what you mean, because I can't puke, but right."

  
Josh puts his arms on top of his knees. Conversations like these are nice because Tyler probably doesn't fucking care, but he lets Josh speak until his mouth runs dry. "I just couldn't stop thinking about the—the person in the water. Like, how it might have had a life or something. I dunno," He pauses. "You can make someone dead, but that doesn't get rid of every minuscule thing they've done on the planet or their friends or their fucking dog. That's why we have huge murder cases in court... other than the fact that murder is illegal."

  
"Because people care," Tyler says. "But trust me, you start caring a lot less when you're dead."

  
"Huh."

  
"Yeah."

  
"Why?"

  
"It's like," Tyler looks up at the blinding blue sky. "Everything becomes meaningless. And it's weird because it's the opposite for living people—it seems like things mean a lot more when someone's dead, at least to them. You realize how much being alive sucked only when being alive isn't an option for you anymore. Then nothing happens when you're like this and I can't change it. I'm here forever and I'm going to run out of things to do. I can walk across this entire planet full of miserable people and miserable things without getting tired and like, commit third degree felonies and join the circus, and I'll still be dead and stuck in the god damn place."

  
Josh is silent for a moment. "I don't know if being dead sounds as appealing as it did before."

  
"Being dead is killing me like I can be more dead than I am now."


End file.
